Monday
(0)Kids in Lee county, Florida are being thumb printed every time they get on or off a school bus. Yes, you read that right, thumb printed, in the name of safety. Could somebody please explain to me how thumb printing a kid when they get on or off a school bus increases their safety by one iota?
Is there any stupid idea that someone, somewhere won’t try and implement in the name of almighty safety? Good lord, this just boggles my mind! And what’s really sad is that these kids are going to grow up with this, never knowing a time when you didn’t just present your thumb print or any other identifying feature whenever asked. They’ll be used to constantly being surveilled and tracked, their lives fed into a computer and analyzed — all for their own good, of course. They’ll also never know a time when they didn’t have to watch anything they did or said because ears are everywhere and there is always some dipstick with a moronic zero-tolerance (zero-thought, more like) policy ready to toss you out on your ear should you say or do the slightest thing they might not like.
I read these stories, I wonder what kind of generation is being raised under these ludicrous “safety” rules, and I despair.
- Myria of It Can't Rain All The Time
This appears to be just one example of the softening of the minds of the individual due to socialized education. If it's feared what effect thumb-printing during transportation is to have, what effect is there when the kids are sitting in classrooms for 8 hours? It's not just the drivel they may pick up, it is simply the very act of submitting to socialist education in the first place. The endless conditioning, categorically, that Good comes from Mother Government and only Mother Government. I guess I fear that individuals can be conditioned by the medium as well as, if not more so, than the message.
Posted by toolkien at March 15, 2004 06:08 PM
I grew up a few miles from the Lee County line (Charlotte) and always thought they were nuts over in Ft Myers, nice to be proven right again.
Posted by Michael Farris at March 15, 2004 09:21 PM
>>Is there any stupid idea that someone, somewhere won’t try and implement in the name of almighty safety?
No.
Remember, enhancing "safety" creates government jobs!
Posted by T. J. Madison at March 15, 2004 09:31 PM
I can't really see the difference between a bus driver looking at, and counting the kids getting on the bus, and the kids pressing a thumb pad to indicate that they actually got on the bus. In one case they are being checked by a human, and in the other, by a device. No big deal!
When people could be relied on to do a conscientious job, all was well, but since bus drivers have become, well, just bus drivers, and they have abdicated themselves from any responsibilty towards their passengers, it has become imperative that more reliable methods of checking on the children's movements be implemented.
Some of these kids are only six or seven year old, they deserve a responsible person to supervise them. In default of that, there needs to be some alternative, be it thumbprints or videos, neither totally satisfactory, but a lot better than having no supervision at all.
The commenters both here and on the original weblog, would be the first to scream if anything untoward happened to their offspring. And that twit mentioning the word - 'terrorism', what a fool.
You all sound more like Luddites than Libertarians.....
Posted by ernest young at March 16, 2004 12:43 AM
Remember, enhancing "safety" creates government jobs!
And unfortunately not just government jobs. As big a problem if we are to reverse the steady encroachment of safety slavery are the commercial jobs and lobbies that hang on the growth of government. Corporations supply the cameras and biometric readers and maintain them. Labourers dig up the roads continually to install new control schemes and "traffic calming". Data is stored and processed. Tickets are printed and issued. Government forms, websites and propaganda are constantly designed and redesigned. Accountants and lawyers find themselves ever more necessary in a fully regulated world. And insurers do very well out of rewriting policies to exclude and/or cover the risks from government.
I receive two or three times a month mailings from organisations that will sell me the written Health and Safety Policies my clients are required to have, forms for the formal risk assessments they are required to carry out, Data Protection Act compliant accident books, ... ad infinitum
Posted by Guy Herbert at March 16, 2004 08:11 AM
